When you wake up
do you feel good?
do you feel rested?

do you remember what it felt like
to wake up
contented?
with peace in mind?

or do you
Rise
stand in the rain
let it soak you to the bone
and wonder why
your skeleton shakes

Run
to every adjacent address
asking direction to where you live
please can I borrow a reminder
of a time when
i remembered to rest

Fall
asleep
to the chirping chorus of lost birds
flashing emergency lights through the window
as your neighbor whose name you can't recall
is rushed to a holding cell hospital
until a room opens up in the great river
and they return home

what would happen if you rested?
would you forget,
everyone
whose name you can't recall
who receive your thoughts and prayers
who look up at you with fearful eyes wishing
you had the power
to stop
and say hello?

Nice to see you.



Really.


It is.
Good.

To see you.

To hear you rustle the ground.


               smell what you were eating for lunch



taste your sorrows

the salt
tastes like cat food to me.


I'm not mad
I'm just glad to see you safe.
Sad to see you go, of course, of course.
I hope that doesn't seem coarse, of course
everything sad runs its course, of corse  

but no

Don't fall in love with a farmer.
You'll never surpass her horse.

Never enamor a catgirl.
You'll only eat tuna or worse.
..
no further questions.



Mad at this world of hard-backed chairs,
claw-footed,
  unbending,

Impending toe stubs every time that I get up.
Bruises where love left me rained on to rust.
Beautiful blue maroon yellow half moons
on my rib cage
Many noons overhead have burned tunes in my head that I sung and I bled to commune with the dead at the tombstone I'm led to the old riverbed
still to this day

there's a hole in the ground where you bury a body and
             a home in the sound of you carrying all my
                                                                ­            unease.

Please
don't
get
up.

I am swiss cheese.
Pain floats through me
and onto the breeze.


I will sit and eat this plain tuna bowl
because I need to complete a macronutrient profile
I looked up on the internet
how to make this temple
   a place where people will come to pray
  and play
and stay for longer than
a fortnite


Tastes like freedom.
Tastes like kibbles.


There's a pretty lass next door
who tastes like tears

And the sound of a breeze blowing through a hole in my wall.


Without hole,
how finish bowl?

Frame hole.
New role.

A door, for the strays
A fine feast of fish.
Dinner is dished.

Dinner for kin.
Home again.

how will my family know when to come in

Dark Part of the world
Hold on
I am looking through shredded bed sheets at a sliver of open sky
                                       like it's the only exit left
                                from the cave we entered in

I am healing in this hole because I do not want to die
I am heading back to heaven but it hasn't been my time
Yet.

Open-ended ending open sky open mind not my time.
I drench my arms in gasoline and give myself a warm hug.
Hold yourself, and the child within.
I deserve I deserve I deserve this burn.
I slowly unthread the *****,
                                      showing red, showing white, showing blue.
I slip off the mittens protecting my hands,
                                       showing blood, showing bone, showing bruise.
Get a hold of yourself, you're not a child.
Grown, Growing, Gone.
I gently unstitch the seams,
                                       showing red, showing yellow, showing green.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
I try again.
Cut off
         The dress
                        You once
                                 Were buried
                                                      In

                                                                       Relax, Regress, Routine.

Bury the scent
              In comfortable, callous, code.
                                        Secret Secret Never Gonna Find
                                        Down in a hole in a hole in the mind
Code the key
Pretend you're okay
SeverSeverSeverSeverServerError------

Remember
That time
You opened your mouth
And breathed
The very first time

That was it.
The opening.
The exit.
The ending.
The craving.
The air.
The sky.
The dark
        space
        holding
        hugging
        cold      and        alone
                                    but not lonely.

holding everything that came before
and a sliver of lips
open to sunlight
words
hearts
sickness
medicine
fear
friendship
forgivene­ss
and all that will come
when it will.

it will.

a sound that carries
farther than where our ears can hear
beyond title
beyond nation
beyond fear
and
carries reminders
of the end of all we hold dear.

hurt
to hear
hurt
to say
because we cannot stay.

We stand on a foundation of pain
And smile
because we know
we share the fall

so
    we look each other in the eye
  and
       without uttering a word
it is understood

what are we


floating

in

air

full

of

empty space


grasping at each others hands
hoping for
for a small touch
to move the hair on our spines

trembling to stand
daring to
to walk away
afraid to die
alone.



we are worms

sightless soundless
sensual

alone.

rubbing fingers together
hoping to
conjure control

we made fire and what else?
endless boxes to isolate in
obsessive walls
invented power
aeons of escaping
our simple claws

our feeble knees

bend

and straighten


our spinal fur

curls

and straightens


when our hands


touch other hands.





Holding anything


but empty space.

I am the mountain man.
I am the shifting sands.
I am the laughter through gritted teeth,
I am the squint of concentration,
I am the missing piece and the stone that won't roll.
I am the Zeit Ghost.
I am the Underwerewolf.
I am the Pseudonami.
I am not what you say I am, until I say: "I Am."
I am the Red Sun Samurai.
I am the Locomotive Provocateur.
I am the bones of kings and slaves.
I am the breath of the wind in the trees.
I am the Electrocuted Interlocutor.
I am the whip of the matador.
I am sunken cities in the swamp.

I am Firestarter.
         Spark Guarder.
I am the assembly line whereby the machine reproduces.
I am capitulated capitalism.
I am the captain of the sky ship to
                                                        Ghost Country.

I am a natural amphetamine
         a synthetic homeopathic
         a cure for the sad
            curation for the lost
            death for the solid and unchanging.

I am the mask of roots.
I am a treehouse full of books.
I am the sword in the daytime.
I am the Day Waker, the Cloud Shaker
the Continent Unmaker, the Deep Laker
the childhood of broken dreams and unbreakable boulders.

Half-slumbering in your living room.
One eye on your joy, the other searching
for answers to the unanswerable question of:

where did it go?

Fully alive, pacing the gravestones
kisses to flowers in the new moon
and a pocketful of reality checks.

Helping you let go of everything
                                        Holding you back.

Hoping you'll hold onto me.

Awoke to the sound of gunfire
Chewed teeth pacifying the burning rage against the disease
Mother's Milk a distant dream
And the sweet salt of your super nature
Caressing the cavities in my head
Swallowing the holes in my soul
as metal shards make more young soldiers whole
completing an illusion of control.

How long can you hold onto a necessary reverie?
As long as you need assuming you both agreed to dream tonight,
To face to face the side by side
To never ever lie
To reprobate the profligate
And accept the overwhelm
All allowing of the atmosphere
Loving every moment hard and soft
And every crevasse in the journey between.
Revive the sight of yourself within the mind of one who reveres
the eyes with which they have been blessed to look upon
a ****** deity,
and to worship fading gold and cracked plaster,
knowing it was born to age and die.